Saturday, September 8, 2012

The website of Mambo, a Central and South American restaurant in Ottawa.

A Canadian restaurant owner set up a phony profile on a sex website and sent X-rated emails to get revenge on a diner who posted negative reviews, a court ruled.

Marisol Simoes, 42, who co-owns two trendy eateries in Ottawa, Ontario, used Elayna Katz's name and photos when she created the adult profile, which boasted that Katz was "a tiger in the bedroom," who liked transgender mates and group sex, Canada's QMI News reported.

Simoes used Katz's wedding photos for the profile, and also sent emails to Katz's bosses at Federation of Canadian Municipalities professing the same kinky tastes, QMI reported.

The restaurateur was found guilty of criminal libel on Thursday. She's scheduled to be sentenced on Nov 8.

Katz said she was targeted because she wrote a bad review of one of Simoes' eateries, Mambo Nuevo Latino, on the website restaurantthing.com in 2009.

Katz complained that the service at Mambo was rude and slow, and that her server brought her a pasta dish with olives when she'd asked for it without olives.

Staff at the ByWard Market neighborhood spot also tried to charge her for two dishes even though she sent the first one back, Katz said, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

Investigators noted the similarities between the language in the emails, profile, and some of Simoes’ online postings, and also tracked her using her IP address.

The profile was set up using a log-in with Simoes’ information.

At the trial, the restaurant owner argued that her husband or one of her employees may have used her computer to create the profile and send the emails.

Katz said she felt vindicated by the judge's decision.

"It's slightly ironic that the (bad press) she was trying to avoid was the one thing that came out of all of this," Katz told the Citizen.